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Ambrose Bierce 



i 



Ambrose Bierce 



By 

Vincent Starrett 



f 



Chicago 

Walter M. Hill 
1920 



This first edition is limited to 250 copies, 
of which this is No. j^ic> 






THE TORCH PRESS 

CEDAR RAPIDS 

JOWA 



TO 

W. C. MORROW 

AMBROSE BIERCE's FRIEND AND MINE 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

For valuable reminiscences and suggestions, ex- 
tremely helpful in the preparation of this volume 
nd its contents, I am indebted to many persons ; par- 
cularly to W. C. Morrow, to Miss Carrie Chris- 
riansen, to Mrs. Josephine Clifford McCrackin, to 
Helen Bierce Isgrigg, and to Walter Neale, Major 
Bierce's publisher. I am happy here to give public 
utterance to my gratitude. A number of character- 
istic anecdotes are quoted from Bierce's autobio- 
graphic vignettes, in his ''Collected Works." 

V. s. 



NOTE 

More than six years of speculation and ap- 
prehension have passed since the disappear- 
ance of Ambrose Blerce. Sanguine hopes 
long have dwindled, and only the frailest 
possibility survives that he yet lives In some 
green recess of the Mexican mountains, or 
some tropical Arcadia In South America. 
Assuming that he Is dead, as we must assume 
who do not look for a miracle, he has ful- 
filled a prophecy made years ago by a writing 
man of his acquaintance: 

"Some day he will go up on Mount Horeb 
and forget to come down. No man will see 
his death-struggle, for he'll cover his face 
with his cloak of motley, and If he sends a 
wireless It will be this : ' 'Tis a grave sub- 
ject' " 

There has been no wireless. 

In the circumstances, it is perhaps pre- 
sumptuously early to attempt an estimate of 
the man and his work; but already both fools 
and angels have rushed in, and the atmos- 
phere is thick with rumor and legend. The 
present appraisal, at least is not fortuitous, 
and its stated facts have the merit of sobriety 
and authority. 



I. THE MAN 

There are many persons who do not care for the 
writings of Ambrose Bierce, and thousands — it is 
shocking to reflect — who never have heard of him. 
The Hon. Franklin K. Lane, erstwhile Secretary of 
the Interior, has gone on record as thinking him "a 
hideous monster, so like the mixture of dragon, liz- 
ard, bat, and snake as to be unnameable," a character- 
ization almost Biercian in its cumulative invective. 
When Mr. Lane made this remark, or wrote it 
down (whichever may have been the case), he said 
it with pious horror and intense dislike; but when 
Gertrude Atherton asserted that Bierce had the 
most brutal imagination she had encountered in 
print, she was paying him a compliment, and she in- 
tended to. Out of those two appraisals we may 
extract the truth — that Bierce was a mighty artist 
in his field, with little or no concern for the reac- 
tions of weaker vessels to his art. 

A great many persons knew Ambrose Bierce, and 
some loved him, and some hated and feared him. 
All, from their own point of view, had excellent 
reason for their quality of regard. Save for those 
who made up this catholic and vari-minded assem- 



^ 



12 AMBROSE BIERCE 

Mage, few persons can speak of Ambrose Bierce, the 
man. The story of Ambrose Bierce the novelist, 
the satirist, the humorist, and the poet, is to a large 
degree the story of Ambrose Bierce the man ; but to 
a larger degree is the story of Ambrose Bierce the 
man the story of Ambrose Bierce the novelist, sat- 
irist, humorist, and poet. 

It is generally known that he served throughout 
the Civil War. He emerged a Major, brevetted 
for distinguished services, and with an honorable 
scar upon his body. Twice he had rescued wounded 
comrades from the battlefield, at the risk of his 
life ; at Kenesaw Mountain he was severely wound- 
ed in the head. He came out of the conflict a sol- 
dier, with a decided leaning toward literature, and 
the story goes that he tossed up a coin to determine 
his career. Instead of *'head" or "tail" he may 
have called 'Word" or "pen," but the story does not 
so inform us. Whatever the deciding influence may 
have been, Bierce commenced journalist and author 
in San Francisco, in 1866, as editor of the News 
Letter. Then, in 1872, he went to London, where, 
for four years, or until 1876, he was on the staff of 
FuUy edited by the younger. Tom Hood. 

In London, the editors of Fun^ amazed at the 
young man's fertile ability, conceived the notion that 
he could write anything, and accordingly piled his 
desk with a weird assortment of old woodcuts, 
minus their captions; they requested that he "write 



THE MAN 13 

things" to fit them. The ''things" Bierce wrote 
astonished England, and Pharisees squirmed beneath 
his lash as they had not done since the days of Swift. 
A cruel finger was on secret ulcers, and the Ameri- 
can's satires quickly gained for him, among his col- 
leagues, the name of "Bitter Bierce." The stinging 
tales and fables he produced to order are those 
found in the volume called Cobwebs From an 
Empty Skull, reputed to be by Dod Grile, and pub- 
lished in 1874. A year previously, he had published 
The Fiend's Delight, and Nuggets and Dust, caustic 
little volumes largely made up of earlier diabolisms 
from California journals. His intimates of the 
period included such joyous spirits as Hood, George 
Augustus Sala, and Capt. Mayne Reid, the boys' 
novelist; this quartette, with others, frequented a 
taproom in Ludgate Station, and gave itself over, as 
Bierce humorously confesses, "to shedding the blood 
of the grape." 
Thus Bierce: 

We worked too hard, dined too well, fre- 
quented too many clubs and went to bed too 
late in the forenoon. In short, we diligently, 
conscientiously and with a perverse satisfaction 
burned the candle of life at both ends and in 
the middle. 

He relates some delightful episodes of the period 
in his Bits of Autobiography, the first volume in his 
Collected Works: the funniest and one of the most 



14 AMBROSE BIERCE 

typical, perhaps, is that concerning his difficulties 
with John Camden Hotten, a publisher with whom 
Mark Twain was having trouble of his own at 
about the same time — although at a greater dis- 
tance. Hotten owed Bierce money for certam work, 
and Bierce, usually financially embarrassed, hound- 
ed Hotten for it until the publisher, in despair, sent 
the implacable creditor to negotiate with his (Hot- 
ten's) manager. Bierce talked vividly for two 
hours, at the end of which time the crestfallen man- 
ager capitulated and produced a check already made 
out and signed. It bore date of the following Sat- 
urday. The rest of the story belongs to Bierce : 
Before Saturday came, Hotten proceeded to 
die of a pork pie in order to beat me out of my 
money. Knowing nothing of this, I strolled 
out to his house in Highgate, hoping to get an 
advance, as I was in great need of cash. On 
being told of his demise I was inexpressibly 
shocked, for my cheque was worthless. There 
was a hope, however, that the bank had not 
heard. So I called a cab and drove furiously 
bank-ward. Unfortunately my gondolier steered 
me past Ludgate Station, in the bar whereof 
our Fleet Street gang of writers had a private 
table. I disembarked for a mug of bitter. Un- 
fortunately, too, Sala, Hood, and others of the 
gang were in their accustomed places. I sat, at 
board and related the sad event. The deceased 
had not in life enjoyed our favour, and I blush 
to say we all fell to making questionable epi- 



THE MAN 15 

taphs to him. I recall one by Sala which ran 
thus: 

Hottetij 

Rotten^ 

Forgotten. 
At the close of the rites, several hours later, I 
resumed my movements against the bank. Too 
late — the old story of the hare and the tor- 
toise was told again! The heavy news had 
overtaken and passed me as I loitered by the 
wayside. I attended the funeral, at which I 
felt more than I cared to express. 

The appearance of his Cobwebs From an Empty 
Skull made Bierce for a time the chief wit and hu- 
morist of England, and, combined with his satirical 
work on Fun, brought about his engagement by 
friends of the exiled Empress Eugenie to conduct a 
journal against her enemies, who purposed to make 
her refuge in England untenable by newspaper at- 
tacks. It appeared that James Mortimer, who was 
later to found and edit the Figaro, was in the habit 
of visiting the exiled Empress at Chislehurst, and 
he it was who learned of a threat by M. Henri 
Rochefort to start his paper. La Lanterne, in Eng- 
land; Rochefort, who had persistently attacked the 
Empress in Paris. Mortimer suggested the found- 
ing and registering in London of a paper called The 
Lantern, which was done and Bierce was made its 
editor. But the struggle never came; Rochefort, 
outwitted, knew the game was up, and did not put 



i6 AMBROSE BIERCE 

his threat into execution, although Bierce, for a few 
numbers, had the delight of abusing the Frenchman 
to his heart's content, a pursuit he found extremely 
congenial. 

Bierce the satirist was for a time in his element; 
but there was little material wealth to be gained in 
London, and at times he was pretty hard up. He 
revived his failing fortunes for a short period by 
writing and publishing his series of "Little Johnny" 
stories — humorous, misspelled essays in zoology, 
supposed to be the work of a small boy. These 
were popular and added color to his name; but 
Bierce's mind was now turning backward to the 
country he had deserted, and in 1876 he returned to 
San Francisco. 

He remained then on the coast for a quarter of a 
century, save for a brief period of mining near 
Deadwood, South Dakota, where his adventures 
with road-agents and other bad men were hair- 
raising. On a night in 1880 he was driving in a 
light wagon through a wild part of the Black Hills. 
The wagon carried thirty thousand dollars in gold 
belonging to the mining company of which he was 
manager, and beside him on the wagon seat was 
Boone May, a famous gunman who was under in- 
dictment for murder. May had been paroled on 
Bierce's promise that he would see him into custody 
again. The notorius gunman sat, huddled in his 
rubber poncho, with his rifle between his knees; he 



THE MAN 17 

was acting as guard of the company's gold. Al- 
though Bierce thought him somewhat off guard, he 
said nothing. 

There came a sudden shout: ''Throw up your 
hands!" 

Bierce reached for his revolver, but it was need- 
less. Almost before the words had left the high- 
wayman's lips, with the quickness of a cat May had 
hurled himself backward over the seat, face upward, 
and with the muzzle of his weapon within a yard of 
the bandit's throat, had fired a shot that forever 
ruined the interrupter's usefulness as a road-agent. 

Bierce returned again to San Francisco. Through 
the warp and woof, then, of certain California jour- 
nals, for many years, ran the glittering thread of his 
genius, and to this period belongs much of his finest 
and strongest work. He became a mighty censor 
who made and unmade men and women, a War- 
wick of the pen. It is no exaggeration to say that 
corrupt politicians, hypocritical philanthropists and 
clergymen, self-worshipers, notoriety seekers, and 
pretenders of every description trembled at his name. 
He wielded an extraordinary power; his pen hung, 
a Damoclean sword, over the length and breadth of 
the Pacific coast. Those who had cause to fear his 
wrath opened their morning papers with something 
like horror. He wrote ''epitaphs" to persons not 
yet dead, of such a nature — had they been dead — 
as to make them turn in their graves. Many of his 



i8 AMBROSE BIERCE 

poetic quips were venomous to a degree, and he 
greeted Oscar Wilde, on the poet's arrival in Amer- 
ica, in 1882, with a blast of invective that all but 
paralyzed that ready wit. His pet abominations 
were James Whitcomb Riley and Ella Wheeler 
Wilcox. In the earlier days of his power an assault 
in print was believed sufficient cause for a pistoled 
reply, and Bierce was always a marked man ; but he 
was utterly fearless, and as he was known to be a 
dead shot, himself, his life always was "spared" by 
the victims of his attacks. His vocabulary of invec- 
tive was the widest and most vitriolic of any modern 
journalist, but it was not billingsgate ; Bierce never 
penned a line that was not impeccable. His wit was 
diabolic — Satanic — but he was always the scholar, 
and he always bowed politely before he struck. The 
suave fierceness of his attack is unique in contem- 
poraneous literature. 

He cherished no personal enmities, in the ordi- 
nary sense, for his attacks were largely upon prin- 
ciples promoted by men, rather than upon the men 
themselves. One who knew him once said ; "I look 
upon Bierce as a literary giant. I don't think he 
really means to walk rough-shod over people, any 
more than a lion means to be rough with a mouse. 
It is only that the lion wonders how anything so 
small can be alive, and he is amused by its antics." 
With his clairvoyant vision, his keen sense of justice. 



THE MAN 19 

and his extraordinary honesty, what an international 
fool-killer he would have made! 

Yet this fierce and hated lampooner had his softer 
side, which he displayed to those he loved and who 
loved him ; and these were not too few. One of his 
oldest friends writes, in a letter: "His private gen- 
tleness, refinement, tenderness, kindness, unselfish- 
ness, are my most cherished memories of him. He 
was deeply — I may say childishly — human. . . 
It was in these intimate things, the aspects which 
the world never saw, that he made himself so deeply 
loved by the few whom he held close. For he was 
exceedingly reserved. Under no circumstances could 
he ever be dragged into physical view before the 
crowds that hated, feared or admired him. He had 
no vanity; his insolence toward the mob was de- 
tached, for he was an aristocrat to the bottom of 
him. But he would have given his coat to his bit- 
terest enemy who happened to be cold." 

His humor, as distinct from his wit, was queer 
and picturesque, and was a distinguished quality. 
In his column of "Prattle" in the San Francisco 
Examiner^ he once remarked that something was "as 
funny as a brick ship." A friend giggled with de- 
light at the conception, and repeated it to others; 
but to his dismay he could find none who would en- 
joy it. "A brick ship !" they repeated. "That isn't 
funny; it's simply foolish." At another time, 
Bierce announced that he regarded every married 



20 AMBROSE BIERCE 

man as his natural enemy ; and the Philistines raved, 
saying he was evil, nasty, and a hopeless beast. The 
boyish fun of his remarks seemed always lost on the 
crowd. Again, when the missing-word nonsense 
was going on, he began to say obscure things, in his 
column, about a poem which Dr. David Starr Jor- 
dan had just published. At length he inaugurated 
a missing-word contest of his own, somewhat as fol- 
lows: "Dr. Jordan is a , and a , and a 

." He invited the public to send him its 

guesses. Heaven knows what replies he received; 
but the Professor was worried, and asked Bierce's 
friends why the writer was getting after him. Fi- 
nally the missing words were supplied: "Dr. Jor- 
dan is a gentleman, and a scholar, and a poet." 
Bierce supplied and published them himself. 

Once a lawyer, whose remarkable name was Otto 
Tum Suden, broke out with some public matter that 
Bierce didn't like. Accordingly, he wrote a little 
jingle about Tum Suden, the burthen of which was 
"Tum Suden, tum duden, tum dey!" It completely 
silenced poor Tum. 

It is not unnatural, however, that Bierce should 
have been misunderstood, and people always were 
misunderstanding him. Standing, one day, with a 
friend, on a high elevation at a midwinter fair, he 
looked down at a vast crowd swarming and sweat- 
ing far below him. Suddnly, coming out of a rev- 
erie, he said: "Wouldn't it be fun to turn loose a 



THE MAN 21 

machine gun into that crowd !" He added a swift 
and droll picture of the result, which sent his friend 
into convulsions, the latter knowing perfectly well 
that Bierce would not have harmed a single hair on 
a head in that swarm. But suppose his friend had 
been no friend at all — had just met the writer, and 
did not know him for what he was! That was 
Bierce's way, however, and it ran into print. Peo- 
ple could never understand him — some people. 

Even his friends did not escape his lash. How- 
ever deep his affection for them, he never spared 
them in public if they stepped awry. But they were 
inclined to think it an honor when he got after them 
in print, and, naturally, there was an admiring lit- 
erary coterie that hailed him as master. I suspect 
they flattered him, although I cannot imagine him 
accepting their flattery. And he was a Master. 
One of this group, perhaps the closest of his literary 
friends, once sent him a story for criticism. Bierce 
returned it with the laconic remark that his friend 
"must have written it for the Waverly Magazine 
when he was a school-girl." 

Among his friends and pupils were the poets, 
George Sterling and Herman Scheffauer, and he 
was on the best of terms with the Bohemian crowd 
that made old San Francisco a sort of American 
Bagdad ; but I believe he never participated in their 
cafe dinners, where they were gazed at and mar- 
veled over by the fringing crowd. He was uncon- 



22 AMBROSE BIERCE 

scious of his own greatness, in any offensive sense, 
and either ignored or failed to see the startled or ad- 
miring looks given him v^^hen people vv^ere told, 
"'That is Ambrose Bierce." He w^as not a show- 
man. I have heard it said that women adored him, 
for he was cavalierly handsome; but he was not 
much of a ladies' man. As I have suggested, how- 
ever, he was always a gentleman and gentlemen are 
none too plentiful. 

An especially interesting chapter in his journal- 
istic career began in 1896, when a great fight was 
being waged in the nation's capital. The late Collis 
P. Huntington was conducting a powerful lobby to 
pass his "refunding bill," releasing him and his asso- 
ciates of the Central Pacific Railroad from their ob- 
ligations to the government. Bierce was asked by 
William Randolph Hearst to go to Washington for 
the Examiner^ to give what aid he might in defeat- 
ing the scheme. A Washington newspaper man 
said to Huntington: "Bierce is in town." 

"How much does he want?" cynically asked 
Huntington. 

This insult was reported to Bierce, who replied: 
"Please go back and tell him that my price is about 
seventy-five million dollars. If, when he is ready to 
pay, I happen to be out of town, he may hand it to 
my friend, the Treasurer of the United States." 

The contest was notable. As in the Eugenie case, 
Bierce was in his element. He wrote so fast and so 



THE MAN 23 

furiously that it became a whimsical saying that he 
wrote with a specially prepared pencil, because his 
pens became red hot and his ink boiled. The result 
was happy, whatever he used, for he drove the cor- 
ruptionist gang out of the Capitol, and forced a 
withdrawal of the insolent measure. It was not so 
long ago that the last installment of the entire debt 
was handed to Bierce's "friend," the Treasurer of 
the United States. 

Later, Bierce removed to Washington, where he 
spent his last years. He was already a celebrity 
when he came there to live, and was more or less of 
a lion ; but his anger always was great when he fan- 
cied anyone was showing him off. It is said that he 
indignantly declined to attend a theater with a 
friend, in New York, because seats had been pro- 
cured in a box for the party that was to accompany 
them. Another story tells of an alleged scene he 
made in a Washington drawing-room, when his 
host presented a street railway magnate. The car 
baron extended his hand. 

"NoT thundered Bierce, in magnificent rage. "I 
wouldn*t take your black hand for all the money 
you could steal in the next ten years ! I ride in one 
of your cars every night and always am compelled 
to stand — there's never a seat for me." 

And the story goes that the black hand was 
speedily withdrawn. I do not vouch for the tale; 
but it sounds a bit tru-ish, if not entirely so. 



24 AMBROSE BIERCE 

It has been remarked time and again that Bierce 
was embittered by failure of the world to appreciate 
his work, by his ''obscurity." That is untrue. Rec- 
ognition was slow, but he was certainly not un- 
known; indeed if a multiplicity of attacks upon a 
man may make him famous, Bierce was famous. It 
is the critics who are to blame for this myth ; many 
attacked him, and many, eager to help him, spoke 
mournfully of his great and unappreciated genius; 
and after a time the story stuck. In a breezy jin- 
gle, Bierce himself summed up this aspect of the 
case, as follows : 

My, how my fame rings out in every zone — 
A thousand critics shouting j "He's unknown!'* 
It is probably true, also, that the foreword to his 
first book of stories, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians^ 
had something to do with the legend: 

Denied existence by the chief publishing 
houses of the country, this book owes itself to 
Mr. E. L. G. Steele, merchant, of this city 
[San Francisco]. In attesting Mr. Steele's 
faith in his judgment and his friend, it will 
serve its author's main and best ambition. 
But, as the years went by, the cognoscenti came to 
know him very well indeed. And those who knew 
him best, in his later years, assert that he was not 
morose and unhappy, although he was a considerable 
sufferer from asthma, and had tried various climates 
without result. 

Despite all his scoffings at clergymen and church 



THE MAN 25 

folk, and despite his so-called heterodox opinions, 
Bierce made profession of a profound Christian 
faith. Even so, the orthodox will frown at it, but 
the man who wrote so exalted a tribute to Jesus of 
Nazareth could hardly have been the hopeless ag- 
nostic he was often pictured. 

"This is my ultimate and determinate sense of 
right," he wrote. " *What under the circumstances 
would Christ have done ?' — the Christ of the New 
Testament, not the Christ of the commentators, 
theologians, priests, and parsons." 

And his friend, Edwin Markham, said of him: 
"He is a composite mind — a blending of Hafiz 
the Persian, Swift, Poe, Thoreau, with sometimes a 
gleam of the Galilean." 



II. THE MASTER 

It seems likely that the enduring fame of the most 
remarkable man, in many ways, of his day, will be 
founded chiefly upon his stories of war — the blind- 
ing flashes of revelation and interpretation that 
make up the group under the laconic legend, **Sol- 
dier," in his greatest book. In the Midst of Life. In 
these are War, stripped of pageantry and glamor, 
stark in naked realism, terrible, in grewsome fascina- 
tion, yet of a sinister beauty. ; Specifically, it is the 
American Civil War that furnishes his characters 
and his texts, the great internecine conflict through- 
out which he gallantly fought; bu,t it is War of 
which he writes, the hideous Thing. \ 

Perhaps it is the attraction of repulsion that, 
again and again, leads one to these tales — although 
there is a record of a man who, having read them 
once, would not repeat the experiment — but it is 
that only in part. There is more than mere terror 
in them; there is religion and poetry, and much of 
the traditional beauty of battle. Their author was 
both soldier and poet, and in the war stories of 
Ambrose Bierce, the horror and ugliness, the lure 
and loveliness of war are so blended that there 



THE MASTER 27 

seems no distinct line of demarcation; the dividing 
line is not a point or sign, but a penumbra. Over 
the w^hole broods an occult significance that tran- 
scends experience. 

Outstanding, even in so collectively remarkable a 
group, are three stories, "A Horseman in the Sky," 
''A Son of the Gods," and ''Chickamauga."; The 
first mentioned quietly opens with a young soldier, 
a Federal sentry, on duty at a point in the moun- 
tains overlooking a wooded drop of a thousand feet. 
He is a Virginian who has conceived it his duty to 
join the forces of the North, and who thus finds 
himself in arms against his family. It is im- 
perative that the position of the camp guarded by 
the young soldier be kept secret; yet he is asleep at 
his post. Waking, he looks across the gorge, and 
on the opposite height beholds a magnificent eques- 
trian statue — a Confederate officer on horseback, 
calmly surveying the camp beneath. 

The young soldier, unobserved by his enemy, 
aims at the officer's breast. But suddenly his soul 
is in tumult; he is shaken by convulsive shudders. 
He cannot take life in that way. If only the officer 
would see him and offer battle ! Then he recalls his 
father's admonition at their parting: at whatever 
cost he must do his duty. The horseman in gray 
turns his head. His features are easily discernible 
now. There is a pause. Then the young soldier 
shifts his aim from the officer's breast and, with 



28 AMBROSE BIERCE 

stony calm, fires at the horse. A moment later, a 
Federal ofEcer, some distance down the side of the 
cliff, sees an amazing thing — a man on horseback, 
riding down into the valley through the air. 
Here is the conclusion to that story : 

Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Fed- 
eral sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands 
and knees. Druse neither turned his head nor 
looked at him, but lay without motion or sign 
of recognition. 

"Did you fire ?" the sergeant whispered. 

"Yes." 

"At what?" 

"A horse. It was standing on yonder rock 
— pretty far out. You see it is no longer there. 
It went over the cliff." 

The man's face was white but he showed no 
other sign of emotion. Having answered, he 
turned away his face and said no more. The 
sergeant did not understand. 

"See here. Druse," he said, after a moment's 
silence, "it's no use making a mystery. I order 
you to report. Was there anybody on the 
horse?" 

"Yes." 

"Who?" 

"My father." 

The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. 
"Good God!" he said. 

It may be claimed that the idea of this story — 
its conclusion — is not original with Bierce. I don't 
know, although for all anyone can say to the con- 



THE MASTER 29 

trary the episode may be a transcript from life. Cer- 
tainly, in this form it is original enough. De Mau- 
passant contrives the same sense of "shock" in the 
tale of a sailor who, after years of wandering, re- 
turns to the village to find his old home vanished, 
and who, in consequence, betakes himself to a 
shadier section of town. In the midst of his maud- 
lin carousing, he discovers in the half-naked creature 
he is fondling, his sister. Remotely, the idea is the 
same in both stories, and, I fancy, it antedates De 
Maupassant by hundreds of years. Since publica- 
tion of Bierce's tale, young writers in numbers de- 
liberately have sought the effect (Peccavi!) with 
tales that are strangely reminiscent; and Billy Sun- 
day rhetorically tells a "true story" of the same sort, 
which might have been taken directly from the 
French master. Thus does life plagiarize from lit- 
erature, in later days, after literature first has pla- 
giarized from life. 

At any rate, it is a situation that was never better 
handled, an idea never more cleanly distorted, than 
by Bierce. "A Horseman in the Sky" is one of the 
most effective of his astonishing vignettes, and is 
given first place in the volume. It has one objec- 
tion, which applies to all terror, horror, and mystery 
tales ; once read, the secret is out, and rereading can- 
not recapture the first story thrill. It may be, how- 
ever, that all literature, of whatever classification, 
is open to the same objection. Fortunately, as in 



30 AMBROSE BIERCE 

the case of Bierce, there is more to literature than 
the mere ''story." 

There is less of this story in *^A Son of the Gods," 
but as a shining glimpse of the tragic beauty of bat- 
tle it is, I believe, unique; possibly it is Bierce's 
finest achievement in the art of writing. He calls it 
a "study in the historical present tense." In order 
to spare the lives of the skirmishers, a young staff 
officer rides forward toward the crest of a bare ridge 
crowned with a stone wall, to make the enemy dis- 
close himself, if the enemy is there. The enemy is 
there and, being discovered, has no further reason 
for concealment. The doomed officer, instead of 
retreating to his friends, rides parallel to the wall, 
in a hail of rifle fire, and thence obliquely to other 
ridges, to uncover other concealed batteries and 
regiments. . . 

The dust drifts away. Incredible ! — that 
enchanted horse and rider have passed a ravine 
and are climbing another slope to unveil an- 
other conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will 
of another armed host. Another moment and 
that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears 
and strikes the air with its forefeet. They are 
down at last. But look again — the man has 
detached himself from the dead animal. He 
stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his 
right hand straight above his head. His face is 
toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level 
with his face and moves it outward, the blade 
of the sabre describing a downward curve. It 



THE MASTER 31 

is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is 
a hero's salute to death and history. 

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt 
to cheer ; they are choking with emotion ; they 
utter hoarse, discordant cries ; they clutch their 
weapons and press tumultuously forward into 
the open. The skirmishers, without orders, 
against orders, are going forward at a keen 
run, like hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak 
and the enemy's now open in full chorus; to 
right and left as far as we can see, the distant 
crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers of 
cloud, and the great shot pitch roaring down 
among our moving masses. Flag after flag of 
ours emerges from the wood, line after line 
sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on its bur- 
nished arms. . . 

Bierce has been called a Martian; a man who 
loved war. In a way^ I think he did ; he was a born 
fighter, and he fought, as later he wrote, with a 
suave fierceness, deadly, direct, and unhastening. 
He was also an humane and tender spirit. As typ- 
ical as the foregoing paragraphs are the following 
lines, with which the narrative concludes: 

The skirmishers return, gathering up the 
dead. Ah, those many, many needless dead! 
That great soul whose beautiful body is lying 
over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hill- 
side — could it not have been spared the bitter 
consciousness of a vain devotion? Would one 
exception have marred too much the pitiless 
perfection of the divine, eternal plan? 



32 AMBROSE BIERCE 

In his more genuinely horrible vein, "Chicka- 
mauga" is unrivaled ; a grotesquely shocking account 
of a deaf-mute child who, wandering from home, 
encountered in the woods a host of wounded sol- 
diers hideously crawling from the battlefield,^ and 
thought they were playing a game. Rebuffed by the 
j awl ess man, upon whose back he tried to ride, the 
child ultimately returns to his home, to find it 
burned and his m.other slain and horribly mutilated 
by a shell. There is nothing occult in this story, 
but, with others of its genre^ it probes the very 
depths of material horror. 

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is better 
known than many of Bierce's tales, and here again 
is a form that has attracted imitators. Like a pan- 
toum, the conclusion brings the narrative back to 
its beginning. A man is engaged in being hanged, 
in this extraordinary tale, and preparations are pro- 
ceeding in a calm and businesslike manner. An or- 
der is given, and the man is dropped. 

Consciousness returns, and he feels the water 
about him; the rope has broken, he knows, and he 
has fallen into the stream. He is fired upon, but 
escapes. After days of travel and incredible hard- 
ship, he reaches his home. His wife is in the door- 
way to greet him, and he springs forward with ex- 
tended arms. At that instant, he feels" a stunning 
blow on the back of his neck, a blaze of light is 
about him — then darkness and silence. "Peyton 



THE MASTER 33 

Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, 
swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers 
of the Owl Creek bridge." 

Again there is the sense of shock, at the end, as 
we realize that between the instant of the hanged 
man's drop and the succeeding instant of his death, 
he has lived days of emotion and suspense. 

The tales of civilians, which make up the second 
half of Bierce's greatest book, are of a piece with 
his war stories. Probably nothing more weirdly 
awful has been conceived than such tales as "A 
Watcher by the Dead," "The Man and the Snake," 
and "The Boarded Window," unless it be Steven- 
son's "The Body Snatcher." The volume entitled 
Can Such Things Be? contains several similar 
stories, although, as a whole, it is apocryphal. In 
"The Mocking Bird" we find again the motif of 
"A Horseman in the Sky;" in "The Death of Hal- 
pin Frayser" there is a haunting detail and a grew- 
some imagery that suggest Poe, and in "My Fa- 
vorite Murder," one of the best tales Bierce ever 
wrote, there is a satirical whimsicality and a cynical 
brutality that make the tale an authentic master- 
piece of something — perhaps humor! 

"A literary quality that is a consecration," re- 
marked one critic, of Bierce's method and method- 
results. That is better than speaking of his "style," 
for I think the miracle of Bierce's fascination is as 
much a lack of what is called style as anything else. 



34 AMBROSE BIERCE 

The clarity and directness of his thought and ex- 
pression, and the nervous strength and purity of his 
diction, are the most unmistakable characteristics 
of his manner. 

Bierce the satirist is seen in nearly all of his 
stories, but in Fantastic Fables, and The Devil's 
Dictionary we have satire bereft of romantic asso- 
ciation; the keenest satire since Swift, glittering, 
bitter, venomous, but thoroughly honest. His 
thrusts are at and through the heart of sham. A 
beautiful specimen of his temper is the following 
fable: 

An Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 
was sitting by a river when a traveler ap- 
proached and said; 

"I wish to cross. Would it be lawful to use 
this boat?" 

"It would," was the reply, "it is my boat." 
The traveler thanked him, and pushing the 
boat into the water, embarked and rowed away. 
But the boat sank and he was drowned. 

"Heartless man!" said an Indignant Spec- 
tator, "why did you not tell him that your boat 
had a hole in it?" 

"The matter of the boat's condition," said 
the great jurist, "was not brought before me." 
The same cynical humor is revealed in the intro- 
ductory paragraphs of the story already referred to, 
called "My Favorite Murder." The solemn ab- 
surdities of the law were Bierce's frequent target; 
thus, in his Devil's Dictionary, the definition of 



THE MASTER 35 

the phrase "court fool" is, laconically, "the plain- 
tiff." His biting wit is nowhere better evidenced 
than in this mocking lexicon. Bacchus, he conceives 
to be "a convenient deity invented by the ancients 
as an excuse for getting drunk;" and a Prelate is 
"a church officer having a superior degree of holi- 
ness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aris- 
tocracy. A gentleman of God." More humor- 
ously, a Garter is "an elastic band intended to keep 
a woman from coming out of her stockings and des- 
olating the country." 

In the same key are his collected epigrams, in 
which we learn that "woman would be more charm- 
ing if one could fall into her arms without falling 
into her hands." 

With all forms of literary expression, Bierce ex- 
perimented successfully; but in verse his percentage 
of permanent contributions is smaller than in any 
other department. His output, while enormous, 
was for the most part ephemeral, and the wisdom 
of collecting even the least of his jingles may well 
be called into question. At least half of the hun- 
dreds of verses contained in the two volumes of his 
collected works given over to poetry, might have 
been left for collectors to discover and resurrect; 
and some delightful volumes of juvenilia and ana 
thus might have been posthumously achieved for him 
by the collecting fraternity. But, "someone will 
surely search them out and put them into circula- 



36 AMBROSE BIERCE 

tion," said their author, in defense of their publica- 
tion in the definitive edition, and there they are, the 
good, the bad, and the indifferent. 

Happily, in the ocean of newspaper jingles and 
rhymed quips there is much excellent poetry. Kip- 
ling, by some, is asserted to have derived his "Re- 
cessional" from Bierce's "Invocation," a noble and 
stately poem; and in "The Passing Show," "Finis 
iEternitatis," and some of the sonnets we have 
poetry of a high order. Maugre, we have much 
excellent satire in many of his journalistic rhymes. 
Like Swift and Butler, and Pope and Byron, Bierce 
gibbeted a great many nobodies; but, as he himself 
remarks, "satire, like other arts, is its own excuse, 
and is not dependent for its interest on the person- 
ality of those who supply the occasion for it." If 
many of Bierce's Black Beetles in Amber seem 
flat, many too are as virile and keen as when they 
were written; and if he flayed men alive, just as 
certainly he raised the moral tone of the community 
he dominated in a manner the value of which is 
perhaps measureless. 

The best example of poetry, however, left us by 
Bierce, me judice, is that great prose poem, The 
Monk and the Hangman's Daughter. This work 
is the joint production of Bierce and G. Adolphe 
Danziger. The latter translated it from the Ger- 
man of Prof. Richard Voss and, I believe, elab- 
orated it. Being unsure of his English, Danziger 



THE MASTER 37 

gave it over to Bierce for revision. Bierce, too, 
elaborated it, practically rewriting it, he testified, as 
well as changing it materially. There was discussion 
about authorship honors ; but the book is a bit of lit- 
erary art that is a credit to all three men, and that 
would be a credit to six. The world would be 
poorer without this delicate and lovely romance. 
Saturated with the color and spirit of the mediaeval 
days it depicts, it is as authentic a classic as Aucassin 
and Nicolette; and its denouement is as terrible as 
it is beautiful. The strange story of Ambrosius the 
monk, and the outcast girl Benedicta, "the hang- 
man's daughter," is one of the masterpieces of lit- 
erature. 

Ambrose Bierce was a great writer and a great 
man. He was a great master of English; but it is 
difficult to place him. He is possibly the most ver- 
satile genius in American letters. He is the equal 
of Stevenson in weird, shadowy effect, and in ex- 
pression he is Stevenson's superior. Those who com- 
pare his work with that of Stephen Crane (in his 
war stories) have not read him understandingly. 
Crane was a fine and original genius, but he was, 
and is, the pupil where Bierce is Master. Bierce's 
"style" is simpler and less spasmodic than Crane's, 
and Bierce brought to his labor a first-hand knowl- 
edge of war, and an imagination more terrible even 
than that which gave us The Red Badge of Cour- 
age, The horrors of both men sometimes transcend 



38 AMBROSE BIERCE 

artistic effect; but their works are enduring peace 
tracts. 

It has been said that Bierce's stories are * 'form- 
ula," and it is in a measure true; but the formula 
is that of a master chemist, and it is inimitable. He 
set the pace for the throng of satirical fabulists who 
have since written ; and his essays, of which nothing 
has been said, are powerful, of immense range, and 
of impeccable diction. His influence on the writers 
of his time, while unacknowledged, is wide. Rarely 
did he attempt anything sustained ; his work is com- 
posed of keen, darting fragments. His only novel 
is a redaction. But who shall complain, when his 
fragments are so perfect? 



III. THE MYSTERY 

In the fall of the year 191 3, Ambrose Bierce, be- 
ing then some months past his seventy-first birthday 
anniversary, started for Mexico. He had for some 
time, and with keen interest, followed the fortunes 
of the revolutionary cause headed by Francisco 
Villa; and he believed that cause a just one. 
From various points along the line of his jour- 
ney, before he reached the southern republic, Bierce 
wrote to his friends. In December of 191 3 the last 
letter he is known to have written was received by 
his daughter. It was dated the month of its re- 
ceipt, and from Chihuahua, Mexico. In it Bierce 
mentioned, casually enough, that he had attached 
himself, unofficially, to a division of Villa's army — 
the exact capacity of his service is not known — 
and spoke of a prospective advance on Ojinaga. The 
rest is silence. 

No further word, bearing the unmistakable 
stamp of authenticity, ever has come out of Mexico. 
There have been rumors without number, even long 
categorical accounts of his death at the hands of the 
revolutionists, but all must be called false. There 
is in them not the faintest ring of truth. They rep- 



40 AMBROSE BIERCE 

resent merely the inevitable speculation, and the in- 
evitable "fakes" of unscrupulous correspondents. 
Typical of the innumerable **clews" offered is the 
follovi^ing: One newspaper correspondent in El 
Paso reported that a second correspondent had told 
him that he (the second correspondent) had seen 
and talked with Bierce before the author passed into 
Mexico; that Bierce had declared he would offer 
his services to the revolutionary cause, and that, 
failing to make such a connection, he would "crawl 
into some out-of-the-way hole in the mountains and 
die." The author of these pages hastily communi- 
cated with the second correspondent, and the second 
correspondent, in a positive communication, vowed 
that he had never seen Bierce, nor had he heard the 
story of Bierce's reported utterance. 

The most elaborate account of Bierce's "death" 
was quoted in full from the Mexican Review, by 
the Washington Post, under date of April 27, 191 9. 
Its extraordinary detail gives it a semblance of 
truth that other accounts have lacked, and, without 
intending to perpetuate a story which Bierce's 
friends and relatives do not for a moment believe, I 
reproduce it in its ungrammatical entirety: 

A short time since the Review editor was 
conversing with a friend, a former officer in the 
constitutionalist army, and casually asked him 
if he had ever heard of an American named 
Ambrose Bierce. To his surprise he replied 



THE MYSTERY 41 

that he had met him several times and had be- 
come quite well acquainted with him. This 
was due to the fact that Bierce could speak lit- 
tle if any Spanish, while the officer is well edu- 
cated and speaks English fluently. 

The latter declared that he saw and talked 
with Bierce several times in the vicinity of Chi- 
huahua late in 191 3 or early in 191 4. Later — 
191 5 — he met a sergeant of Villa's army, an 
old acquaintance, and this man told him about 
having witnessed the execution of an American 
who corresponded in every manner with 
Bierce's description. 

This affair took place near Icamole, a vil- 
lage in the region of Monterey and Saltillo, 
east of Chihuahua state, in August, 191 5. The 
constitutionalists occupied that village while 
Gen. Tomas Urbina, one of Villa's most blood- 
thirsty fellows, was nearby and between that 
place and the border. 

One day an American, accompanied by a 
Mexican, convoying four mules, on one of 
which was a machine gun, while the others 
were loaded with ammunition, was captured on 
the trail, headed toward Icamole, and taken be- 
fore Urbina. The Mexican told Urbina that 
he had been engaged by another Mexican to 
guide the mules and the American to the con- 
stitutionalist camp at Icamole. That was all 
he knew. The American apparently could not 
speak or understand any Spanish, and made no 
intelligent reply to the questions asked him. 

The bloodthirsty Urbina, who was never so 
happy as when killing some one himself or or- 



42 AMBROSE BIERCE 

dering it to be done, weaned of questioning the 
prisoners and ordered them to be shot at once. 

The two were stood up in front of a firing 
squad, where the Mexican threw himself on his 
knees, stretched out his arms, and refused to 
have his eyes bandaged, saying he wanted to 
"see himself killed." All he asked was that 
his face be not mutilated, which was not done. 

Seeing his companion on his knees, the Amer- 
ican followed suit, but the Mexican told him 
to stand up. He did not understand what was 
said, but remained on his knees, arms out- 
stretched, like his companion, and with unban- 
daged eyes he met his death at the hands of the 
firing squad. The two victims were buried by 
the side of the trail. 

The sergeant who witnessed the afiFair de- 
scribed Bierce exactly, though he had never seen 
him to his knowledge. Incidentally it may be 
stated that Urbina himself soon after met his 
death by Villa's orders at the hands of the no- 
torious ''Matador Fierro." 

It is to be doubted whether Villa ever knew 
about this double execution, such affairs being 
common enough at that time. 

Inquiry is now being made for the sergeant 
in question, in order that further details of the 
affair may be secured, as well as information re- 
garding the exact locality of the execution and 
the burial place of the two victims. 
Only two things need to be considered in refuting 
the foregoing narrative. First, this is only one of a 
great many stones, despite its painstaking vraisem- 



THE MYSTERY 43 

blance; and, second, the execution is dated in the 
fall of 191 5, approximately two years after Bierce's 
last letter. Had Ambrose Bierce been alive in 191 5, 
had he been living at almost any time between the 
date of his last letter and the reported date of his 
death, he would have sent some communication to 
his friends and relatives. This is recognized by all 
who knew him best, and is the final answer to the 
extravagant chronicle in the Mexican Review. It 
may be remarked, however, in passing, that the care- 
fully detailed account is just such a tale as might 
have been constructed by a press agent eager to lift 
the onus of Bierce's disappearance from official Mex- 
ican shoulders; and of such paid press agents there 
have been many. It will be noted that care is taken 
to report also the execution of Urbina, and even to 
''whitewash" Villa, although I believe the propa- 
ganda to have been Carranzista. 

This careful piece of imagination was followed 
closely by a still more carefully elaborated account 
of the same story. Written by James H. Wilkins, 
it appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin of March 
24, 1920. Wilkins quotes George F. Weeks, who 
was probably responsible for the former story, since 
he was editor of the Mexican Review, speaks of 
Major Bierce as having been military advisor to 
Carranza, and dwells at length on Bierce's alleged 
expressed desire to "die in battle." One Edmundo 
Melero, an associate editor of the Mexican Review^ 



44 AMBROSE BIERCE 

is declared to have been with Bierce almost from 
the moment of his arrival in Mexico, but as Melero 
died of pneumonia the day after Wilkins arrived in 
Mexico City (I am quoting Wilkins's story), Wil- 
kins could not interview him. Fortunately, Weeks 
knew all that Melero could have told, and Weeks 
told Wilkins that Melero had been seeking a Mex- 
ican, then in Mexico City, who had been present at 
the attack on the mule train when Bierce was "cap- 
tured" and "executed." 

To find this Indian in a city of a million souls 
was no trick for Wilkins, and the discovered eye- 
witness repeated the story I have already quoted, 
with unimportant variations. The convenient In- 
dian then produced a photograph of Ambrose 
Bierce, which had been among the effects taken 
from the "body." Wilkins identified it at once. 
But the Indian would not part with it ; he preferred 
to destroy the photograph, believing it had served 
its purpose, and fearing consequences to himself 
when the Wilkins revelation was published. This 
photograph was the sensation of the Wilkins story, 
which otherwise was the same story as formerly 
told. 

A friend of mine in California fairly rushed this 
article to me, saying, "Wilkins is an old and reliable 
journalist." I shall not attempt to deny either his 
age or his reliability, but I will casually suggest 



THE MYSTERY 45 

that if he is reliable he is extraordinarily gullible, 
whatever his age. 

One remarkable story came privately to me, and 
w^as to the positive effect that Ambrose Bierce had 
been alive and well in San Luis Potosi, as late as 
December of 191 8, five years after his disappearance 
and after his last letter to his friends. The narra- 
tor of that tale believed him to be still living (May, 
1920), and ready to come back and astound the 
world when his ''death" had been sufficiently ad- 
vertised. There were many details to the story, 
and another Mexican figured. This Mexican had 
seen a portrait of Bierce in the story-teller's office, 
had exclaimed at sight of it, and had told of know- 
ing the original; Bierce and this Indian, it devel- 
oped, had parted company in San Luis Potosi in 
December of 191 8! The Major was known to the 
Mexican as "Don Ambrosio." But this Mexican 
was murdered in Los Angeles, in a triangular love 
scrape, as was attested surely enough by a newspaper 
account of his murder, so the narrator's chief wit- 
ness had vanished. This investigator, too, was, at 
least, too credible ; although he was shrewd enough 
to see through the Weeks and Wilkins stories, and to 
tear them to pieces. Certainly he knew better than 
to accuse Bierce of seeking morbid publicity. 

Other extraordinary tales there have been, and a 
dispatch to the New York World of April 3, 191 5, 



46 AMBROSE BIERCE 

dated from Bloomlngton, Illinois, soberly recited 
that Mrs. H. D. Cowden of that city, Bierce's 
daughter, had received a letter from her father 
which entirely cleared the mystery of his dis- 
appearance. He was even then in France, it 
seemed, an officer on Lord Kitchener's staff, had 
escaped injury, and was in good health. Yet from 
Mrs. Cowden's own lips I have had it that no such 
letter, no such information conveyed in whatever 
manner, had ever reached her. A later story re- 
ported that Bierce had perished with Kitchener, 
when the great soldier was drowned. 

This is all sensational journalism. There is every 
reason to doubt that Bierce ever left Mexico; that 
he long survived his last bit of letter-writing — the 
brief communication to his daughter, in December 
of 1 91 3. The manner of his passing probably never 
will be known, but it is to be recalled that he suf- 
fered from asthma, and that he was more than 
seventy-one years of age when he went away. Were 
he alive in the year 1920 he would be 78 years old. 

There is one further consideration: Did Bierce, 
when he went into Mexico, expect to return? Did 
he go, calmly and deliberatly, to his death? Did 
he, indeed, seek death? The question has been 
raised, and so it must be answered. In support of 
the contention, two highly significant letters have 
been offered. These were received by Mrs. Jose- 
phine Clifford McCrackin of San Jose, California, 



THE MYSTERY 47 

long a warm friend of the vanished author, and 
there is not the slightest doubt of their authen- 
ticity. The first, chronologically, is dated from 
Washington, September 10, 191 3, and is as follows: 
Dear Joe : The reason that I did not answer 
your letter sooner is — I have been away (in 
New York) and did not have it with me. I 
suppose I shall not see your book for a long 
time, for I am going away and have no notion 
when I shall return. I expect to go to, perhaps 
across. South America — possibly via Mexico, 
if I can get through without being stood up 
against a wall and shot as a gringo. But that is 
better than dying in bed, is it not? If Dune 
did not need you so badly I'd ask you to get 
your hat and come along. God bless and keep 
you. 

The faint suggestion in this letter is more clearly 
defined in the second and last letter received by 
Mrs. McCrackin, three days later: 

Dear Joe : Thank you for the book. I thank 
you for your friendship — and much besides. 
This is to say good-by at the end of a pleasant 
correspondence in which your woman's prerog- 
ative of having the last word is denied to you. 
Before I could receive it I shall be gone. But 
some time, somewhere, I hope to hear from you 
again. Yes, I shall go into Mexico with a 
pretty definite purpose, which, however, is not 
at present disclosable. You must try to forgive 
my obstinacy in not 'perishing" where I am. 
I want to be where something worth while is 
going on, or where nothing whatever is going 



48 AMBROSE BIERCE 

on. Most of what is going on in your own 
country is exceedingly distasteful to me. 

Pray for me? Why, yes, dear — that will 
not harm either of us. I loathe religions, a 
Christian gives me qualms and a Catholic sets 
my teeth on edge, but pray for me just the 
same, for with all those faults upon your head 
(it's a nice head, too), I am pretty fond of you, 
I guess. May you live as long as you want to, 
and then pass smilingly into the darkness — the 
good, good darkness. Devotedly your friend. 
He goes "with a pretty definite purpose;" his 
"obstinacy" will not allow him to perish in Wash- 
ington, and death at the hands of the Mexicans is 
"better than dying in bed." He wishes to be where 
something worth while is going on, or "where noth- 
ing whatever is going on ;" and, finally, there is the 
reference to the "good, good darkness."' 

Yet also he had announced his intention, if pos- 
sible, to cross South America. 

It is difficult to get away from the hints in those 
two letters; and the assumption that Bierce knew 
he would not return is inescapable. But to assume 
that he cordially sought death is another matter. 
He would be ready for it when it came, he would 
pass smilingly into the "good, good darkness," but 
does anyone who knows Ambrose Bierce or his work 
suppose that he would encourage, let us say, his own 
murder? That he would rush into battle, let us 
say, hoping for a friendly bullet through his heart ? 



THE MYSTERY 49 

That his passing was, in effect, a suicide, although 
the hand may have been another than his own? 
Ambrose Bierce's friends do not think so, and they 
are right. His "good-by" to his friends was real 
enough, but all he certainly knew was that some- 
where, some time, perhaps in a few months, perhaps 
in a year or two, death would overtake him, and that 
he would not have returned to his home. That 
death did come to him, not long after he wrote the 
last letter received by his daughter, we must believe. 

If he was murdered by bandits, and had a chance 
for life, it is safe to assume that there was a fight. 
If he died of disease, which is not at all improbable, 
he regretted his inability to write. Bierce was not 
cruel to his friends. 

It is likely that the disappearance is complete, 
that the mystery never will be solved. The United 
States government's investigation has come to noth- 
ing, and indeed it has been lax enough. 

Ambrose Bierce was born in Meiggs County, 
Ohio, June 24, 1842, son of Marcus Aurelius and 
Laura (Sherwood) Bierce. He died — where? 
And when? Or is he dead? The time for hope 
would seem to have passed. One thinks of that 
grim prophecy, years ago; and there has been no 
wireless. 

Setting aside the grief of friends and relatives, 
there is something terribly beautiful and fitting in 
the manner of the passing of Ambrose Bierce; a 



50 AMBROSE BIERCE 

tragically appropriate conclusion to a life of erratic 
adventure and high endeavor. Soldier-fighter and 
soldier- writer. Scotson Clark's well-known carica- 
ture of Bierce dragging a pen from a scabbard is 
the undying portrait of the man. 




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